{"id":69962,"date":"2013-09-07T14:00:34","date_gmt":"2013-09-07T18:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=69962"},"modified":"2013-09-06T14:48:27","modified_gmt":"2013-09-06T18:48:27","slug":"decades-later-its-still-the-m-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/decades-later-its-still-the-m-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Decades Later, It\u2019s Still the M-Word"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I know this sounds like sacrilege on a website run by Eric Francis, but I really don\u2019t like masturbation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I don\u2019t mean the action — that\u2019s fine. It\u2019s the word. It sounds awful. It\u2019s hard to pronounce. No wonder no one wants to talk about it — they can\u2019t even say it. It\u2019s neck-and-neck with \u201cmenstruation\u201d for the coldest, most technical-sounding sexually related word. Even \u201cejaculation\u201d isn\u2019t as bad — at least that has that breezy \u201cjack\u201d syllable at its heart, calling to mind a carefree sailor off to seek his fortune, as well as a phonetic kissing kinship with \u201cexclamation.\u201d <\/p>\n

But masturbation sounds like a combination of \u201csmash\u201d and \u201cdisturb,\u201d clicking off into a robotic terminal suffix that smacks of machinery (not that I have anything against vibrators — they\u2019re not for me, but I don\u2019t have anything against them). [And according to the Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a>, there is long-standing speculation that the Latin word mastubari is an altered form of a word meaning “to defile oneself with the hand.” — Amanda]<\/p>\n

The whole contraption of a word has an ominous steampunk resonance, conjuring up mustache twirling and tying poor Nell to the train tracks. So if you catch me avoiding using it as I write, understand this is why.<\/p>\n

Not that other terms have much going for them. \u201cSelf-abuse\u201d is simply inaccurate. Speaking of Victorians, \u201conanism,\u201d while just as difficult to say, does have that Biblical origin as well as that killer association with the Dorothy Parker anecdote (she named her parakeet Onan, \u201cbecause he spilled his seed on the ground.\u201d If I\u2019m ever feeling blue, all I have to do is think of that one.).<\/p>\n


\nSaying \u201cself-pleasuring\u201d in these times earns a snort. You might as well project a big image of the original hairy couple from the first edition Joy of Sex<\/em> book. (And guess what? I have one! Right now everything\u2019s everywhere because we had a flood in our house, and a lot of the books are jumbled, and The Joy of Sex<\/em> is on top of The Inauguration of Barack Obama<\/em>. Apologies to both the Comforts and the first family.) Or you could link to a Will Farrell \u201cmy luv-ahhhhhh\u201d sketch. <\/p>\n

So this is what happens when you\u2019re a poet and writer. You have to get this word stuff out of the way first.<\/p>\n

What brought this to mind was an essay Eric wrote on artist, writer and sex educator Betty Dodson for the subscriber version of Planet Waves two weeks ago. He included a link to a facsimile of her original groundbreaking article on masturbation for Ms. Magazine<\/em> — he says 1973, but I could swear it was 1974, and online references have it in both years. <\/p>\n

The reason I think it\u2019s 1974 is that as soon as I pulled up the link I recognized it. I remembered the photo first, then some of the text. I remembered it from the summer of 1974, because I remember also reading a National Lampoon<\/em> magazine during that vacation, and its cover was \u201cIsolationism and Tooth Decay.\u201d For reals. I was 13, and this experience actually formed many of my later beliefs and practices. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it happened: The school I attended had a magazine sale as a fundraiser, and my mother believed in both supporting the school and in reading, and so she ordered a couple of subscriptions as well as letting us check off pretty much any boxes we chose. She subscribed to Ms.<\/em>; the National Lampoon<\/em> was my brother, of course. My mother never put any restrictions on our reading (being a First Amendment-loving librarian, bless her) and my father was too busy being a depressed rageaholic and building weapons to care. <\/p>\n

I recognized, simply and suddenly, the photo of a nude woman, her head thrown back and back arched and legs crossed. \u201cA daily yoga-style workout helps Betty Dodson keep in touch with her body,\u201d read the caption. I remembered that I had somehow gotten the impression that she was in that picture demonstrating one of the techniques she was writing about, which further confused me. <\/p>\n

I remember another article in that Ms.<\/em> that was probably as formative for me: Rock critic Karen Durbin (there were actually women who wrote about rock and roll! That\u2019s what I wanted to do when I grew up!) wrote \u201cCan a Feminist Love the World\u2019s Greatest Rock Band?\u201d arguing that cock rock — or even Mick Jagger whipping the stage with a belt during \u201cMidnight Rambler\u201d — could be appropriated, critiqued and just plain enjoyed from a feminist perspective. <\/p>\n

I actually could understand the problem and the argument, and had some of my own opinions on it all — being sexy was a form of power, performance was a form of power, and there was no reason a woman shouldn\u2019t do it in the same manner as a man. I was already a fan of the growing androgynous and glitter movement in rock, and saw blurring of gender boundaries as a duty of an artist and that it had been going on for at least a century. <\/p>\n

As you can tell, I was an insufferable young woman and it\u2019s no mystery why friends dropped me like a hot potato and why I was usually so lonely.<\/p>\n

What I think was revolutionary and what appealed to my logic and curiosity was her contention that self-sex was just another form of sex, not something less worthy or in any way wrong. I guess I still have that youthful way of looking at things in that respect — the only question I\u2019d ever had about any kind of enjoyment is \u201cwho is it hurting?\u201d It\u2019s this, along with being in the arts, that made anti-gay bigotry impossible for me to understand and let me push for gay rights, that made me brazen my way through the ’70s and ’80s version of bullying and slut-shaming, and that makes what I\u2019m doing today possible. Innocence, ignorance or perversity? I guess it\u2019s seen these ways by some. But can anyone answer my question in a way that\u2019s rational or that has any proof? <\/p>\n

Who is it hurting, to touch yourself? Who is it hurting, for a woman to love a woman? Who is it hurting, to love more than one? <\/p>\n

You can hurt all kinds of people if you\u2019re the kind of person who hurts people. You can do this no matter what kind of relationship you\u2019re in. But the relationship itself? I\u2019ve never seen how that can do harm.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m aware that the early prohibitions against masturbation in Western European Christianity came from the logic that it \u201crobbed\u201d from the primary relationship (just as a \u201csecondary\u201d would rob love, when love is conceived as a finite resource). The primary relationship had to be one of two, defined as male and female, to be a sacrament and reflect Christ and the church. That\u2019s the concept, but my goodness, it\u2019s hard to understand how they came up with that one. It\u2019s kind of like the idea that if you\u2019re going to lie, you better make it a real doozy, because that\u2019s more likely to be believed. <\/p>\n

As a young person, I wondered: Wouldn\u2019t it make more sense for a marriage to be between two men, because Christ was a man and the church is all represented by men? And what about the nuns; they marry Christ but then who does Christ marry? Because then he\u2019d have to marry the church, but only two people can get married. Except that a whole bunch of nuns get married to one Christ, except he\u2019s three people, except he\u2019s not. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of time to think while you\u2019re sitting around during those eternal church masses. I told you I used to read anything I could get my hands on, and that included whatever religion class texts would pop up in the pew hymnal rail. I would also read the Bible at random, as well as the missal for different types of ceremonies, including marriage. There would be little explications of this sort, and that\u2019s where all this thinking came from. It\u2019s still happening today, obviously.<\/p>\n

The first part of Dodson\u2019s article wasn\u2019t as interesting to me, because it told mostly of an older woman who had been married and divorced and had vast life experiences of which I could understand little. When she got into her artistic projects and theory, I could come along. So to speak. For all my pseudo-intellectualism, I wasn\u2019t sure (like most people of that day and age) what or where a clitoris was. In fact, at first, I wasn\u2019t sure what masturbation meant, because it only popped up occasionally in written texts, only to be hushed and never heard again. It was never explained or defined, just surrounded by a miasma of shame, so I even wondered if it had something to do with some kind of abuse.<\/p>\n

As with most of my vocabulary, I picked it up through context, and Dodson\u2019s article made that particularly easy. If only three concepts took hold in my turbulent brain, these three would have been enough to create a healthy sexuality, against all odds. Reading back, here are the three I suspect stuck with me:<\/p>\n

\u2022\t\u201cSexual skill and the ability to respond are not \u2018natural\u2019 — at least not in our society … . Sex is like any other skill or art form — it has to be learned and practiced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022\t\u201cI have never met a person whom I would consider a good lover who wasn\u2019t totally turned on by any information I could give about what turned me on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022\t\u201cOur society does not really approve of sexually proficient and independent women. Which gets us to the double standard — the concept that men have the social approval to be aggressive (independent) and sexually polygamous, but that women should be nonaggressive (dependent) and sexually monogamous.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Please note that I don\u2019t believe women should not be monogamous — and I\u2019m not equating being polyamorous with independence and sexual proficiency. I\u2019m only siding with Dodson against the notion that women should<\/em> be monogamous. Women should <\/em>be the way that suits them.)<\/p>\n

What\u2019s remarkable (as much so as that \u201cIsolationism and Tooth Decay\u201d issue of National Lampoon<\/em>) is that we\u2019re still trying to figure this shit out, even when someone put it as clearly as Dodson did in 1974. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s something that\u2019s just as accurate now: \u201cWe have been conditioned to make love as though we are rushing to an appointment,\u201d I read today. I know that as an older teen and in my early 20s, I enjoyed — and I think this is true of many growing up in America — much more leisure in time, even if those long stretches of makeout sessions did happen in the cramped space of a car or a tiny, cold rented room. <\/p>\n

Or this — another thing that bears repeating: \u201cJoyful masturbation and self-love naturally flows over into a sexual exchange with another person. We can give and receive love best when we feel good about ourselves. Because I am secure about my sexual response and orgasm, I feel free to stimulate my clitoris along with penetration — or to show my partner what turns me on. During oral sex, I can state my preference — giving my partner necessary feedback on what pleases me.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I\u2019m writing this, I\u2019m listening to an Internet radio station with songs from the 1970s, to kind of set the mood. They\u2019re playing Randy Newman\u2019s \u201cPolitical Science.\u201d It\u2019s one more instance of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again:<\/p>\n

No one likes us — I don\u2019t know why
\nWe may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
\nBut all around, even our old friends put us down
\nLet\u2019s drop the big one and see what happens\u2026
\nThey all hate us anyhow,
\nSo let\u2019s drop the big one now<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila I know this sounds like sacrilege on a website run by Eric Francis, but I really don\u2019t like masturbation. I don\u2019t mean the action — that\u2019s fine. It\u2019s the word. It sounds awful. It\u2019s hard to pronounce. No wonder no one wants to talk about it — they can\u2019t even say it. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69962"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}